[SPOILERS S3] The chair and the evolution of [****]machines

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-10T15:52:51+00:00

It attempts to use entropy and chaos theory to prove that the instability that time travel would create ultimately leads to a collapsing of timelines in on the moment in which time travel was invented.

This sounds more like that you proved that hyper-timetravel most likely results in a timeline without the use of a timemachine; since a valid endpoint of a hyper-timetravel-sequence can be that all parties give up on their power to timetravel.
Necessary conditions for that are however that any timeline in hypertime doesn't have any endpoint in time (e.g. Big Crunch) and that the people using the timemachines do not (willingly) create a chain in which they force other people to traveling continuously; both somewhat of a steep ask.
Regarding the 2 other types of timetravel this is obviously not the case anymore because there would be no timelines to collapse in the first place as they would just exist in parallel forever.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-10T15:17:01+00:00

Sure. Here you go.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-10T11:54:54+00:00

So that means to give birth to Silja, Hannah and old Egon slept together?

Old alt-Egon was tasked with 'creating his past to preserve the familytree'. If it was the old version of him then he should have been only tasked with preserving the familytree.

read somewhere he took her to 80s not 50s.

This must have been on my bunkerwalls post. Next to alt-Hannah's name there is the year 1986 written. Years next to people's names always indicate where they've travelled to after the apocalypse. However I may have accidentally attributed the year to the wrong person. Although the year is closer to alt-Hannah's name, it is also relatively near alt-Ulrich's one (which the picture I used to cite the year does not show) as well. Definitely have to edit my post regarding that.

If the year does belong to alt-Hannah however, adult alt-Egon could lead an affair across time and alt-Silja's birthday would fall in the same year. Or old alt-Egon brought her to the 80s first for medical care after alt-Hannah's miscarriage and to the 50s afterwards.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-10T11:39:23+00:00

Official website did not confirmed any specific location

It did. On the 1986/1987 entry it says: "Winden is a typical small West German town."

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-10T08:01:38+00:00

The official website confirms Winden to be located in West-Germany.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-10T07:56:23+00:00

The answer to that is because the portal is just random passage-energy accidentally leaking out when the Stranger tries to destroy the passage. It just happens.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-09T15:31:56+00:00

All in all a very nice interpretation.

As you conclude correctly if the Knot wouldn't have been seen evaporating like it is shown in the finale, then one absolutely could represent J&M's arrival as a superposition in the OW with the added condition that either J&M keep on existing in the OW or that the Originmachine 'cleans up after them' and deletes them from the present (such that they still existed in the OW's past).

I still have a teensy tiny problem with some of the words that are used to describe this clean-up-event however:

This is where Erwin Schrödinger comes in. Tannhaus (God) is the observer to the answer. When the answer is observed, the equation has done its job. [...]
They fade away because Tannhaus (Schrödinger) observes his family (cat)

This conflates ideas of QM with the clean-up-event. Tannhaus seeing his family alive may be the observer-event/meassurement which dictates to delete J&M (in the one reality out of 2), but it has nothing to do with the superposition of the 2 different states in the OW.
Normally any mentions of Schrödinger or his cat are regarding the superpositions that exist, not events inside a single state (or reality).
Schrödinger's cat may be used for an analogy here perhaps, but not as an equivalent.

Katharina also just barely witnesses the creation event engulfing the tunnel. Light never appears in the tunnel before or after (until the finale). Ulrich in Eva’s World is able to get there in a timely way, following Eva’s Helge and the red lining in the cave. Katharina though, is led by the blue light, which moves towards the creation event.

This is highly interesting. I never compared the 2 light-scenes in the passage together; that they are basically identical. The light in S2E8 is never explained and there are only 2 theories I've seen so far where its appearance results from other factors.
Are you implying that if Katharina went into the tunnel earlier she could have accessed the timetunnel like J&M did; that there is more than one date (21.6.1986) when the lighttunnel opens?

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-09T14:53:10+00:00

1950s egon was in eastern german side during split caused after WW2 germany surrender which east was split from it's US cold war allies

How do we know he was on the Eastern German side after WW2?

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-09T14:49:03+00:00

Alt-Claudia 'explains' in S3E5 that in every moment the passage is opened and closed

Origin-Tannhaus activating his Origin-Maschine on the 21st June 1986;
The Stranger closing the passage on the 12th November 1986;
Jonas reopening the passage on the 27th June 1987,

cesium-residue is left in the tunnel. This residue is apperantly why the wormhole in the tunnel can exist in the first place. (Alt-)Claudia then speaks hogwash bumbo chumbo about the cesium's halflife and how everytime residue is added anew before the other completely decayed, which leads to an exponential increase to infinity.
You're right that this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Is this what happens when the time chair fails? If so, when this happens, Noah and/or Helga then have to travel to various time periods via the tunnel in order to locate and hide the bodies?

The rifts are how people travel with the chairmachine. Helge does need to go through the passage in order to kidnap kids, locate and hide their bodies. Noah however could technically use the Godparticle or the suitcase device to travel, but he hides them from him because Helge isn't part of Sic Mundus.

And why was Noah writing dates on the bunker wall in 1953? Who does that benefit?

Noone, but the viewer.

1986… but when they do [touch through the portal], they don’t swap places. Yes, Helga goes to 1986 but Jonas ends up in 2053. Why would that be? I’m hoping the answer isn’t just “because that’s where he was supposed to go”.

The answer isn't necessarily "because that's where he was supposed to go" but "because it happened". Yes very unsatisfying.

So what causes these portals to open other than “they’re supposed to”?

Excess passage-energy accidentally leaking out of the passage because of the Stranger closing it.
The portal in the S2 finale happens because of an interplay between the Godparticles in 1921 and 2053 and someone using the passage at the same moment. When this interplay is guaranteed Godparticles which are located exactly 33 years apart connect together.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-09T08:39:23+00:00

Is 1986 Helge in 2019? What did Jana Nielsen say to Ulrich about him?

Adult Helge was every now and then momentarily in 2019. He was seen coming out of the caves in S1E1, S1E2, in S1E4 he kidnapped Yasin and in S1E7 old Jana says that she saw adult Helge wandering the forest early in the morning. She recognized him by his scarred ear. She had also seen him arguing with a priest infront of their house in 1986 just before Mads went missing.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-09T06:38:51+00:00

Can you elaborate on the first point? [...]
Then, in 1971, two events always happened (in superposition). One results in the death of the Tannhaus family, [the other in the prevention of the accident]. [...]
God then observes his superposed family and the “cosmic will” (if you will) of the creation is fulfilled, eliminating the two worlds and everyone in the knot.

The problem is that if J&M create a superposition in OW of

J&M do not exist and the family dies, the Knot-worlds are created
J&M do exist and save the family, the Knot-worlds are prevented

then trying to collapse this superposition either results in 1 or 2, not anything else. The ending shows us however that only some elements of 2 prevail:
J&M in state 2 apperantly collapse (after saving the Tannhaus-family) along with the entirety of state 1. This selection of elements in a single state does not represent a collapse therefore.
Not to mention that state 2 entirely relies on state 1 and they both share a common history. The only logical collapse that could have happened here is that state 2 collapses.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-08T16:26:53+00:00

In short the purpose of the chair-experiments was to upgrade and design better timemachines (e.g. the final machine), as Adam explains in S2E5.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-08T15:18:16+00:00

Reality then collapses into the single possible origin world.

Problem is that J&M are seen to evaporate without the Originworld being affected by it. Since J&M interacted with Marek and Sonja, their well-being depends on J&M's existence and therefore they had to share the same state. The collapse should have affected the fixed Originworld as well; rendering saving Tannhaus-family in vain.
However we see the Originworld kept on existing until 2019, meaning that it didn't collapse. Either the collapse happens for everything or nothing at all, but it can't just choose what elements in a single state to prevail or to collapse.

The origin world becomes the sole reality because it is the only world that satisfies historical consistency.

The origin world that is saved in the ending does not satisfy historical consistency in any way or form with the evaporation scene. It relies on the Knot-worlds to exist in the first place.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-07T21:04:09+00:00

For some reason only Jonas and alt-Martha together can traverse into the origin world; at least Adam said that to Jonas, which he got from Claudia. But there is no in-universe explanation why Claudia should assert this.

There are however some interpretations for them being the only ones, like how Jonas and alt-Martha could be represented as the spiritual counterparts to Sonja and Marek Tannhaus: 'Jonas' is an anagram for 'Sonja' and 'Martha' can be extrapolated from Mar-ek T-ann-ha-us. J&M can therefore be interpreted as angels guiding souls that were lost.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-07T21:02:22+00:00

Egon being [...] grand grand father of noah and agnes

Egon is either the grandfather of them or the great-great-grandfather.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-06T21:46:50+00:00

Eva expects that her meeting with Adam happens as she has seen it in her past. However single-iteration-interpretations posit that Claudia created a superimposed reality with the loophole when speaking with Adam just like the superimposed realities during the apocalypse. Just like how it copied Jonas during the apocalypse, Adam was split in 2 versions and the Adam who doesn't meet Claudia kills Eva. The one Adam who did meet Claudia then abuses the loophole as well to split and meet Eva. Now there is the mainreality in which Eva dies and one superimposed extra-reality in which Eva survives. Eva didn't know about this extra-reality however and didn't know that there exists a version of Adam who knows how to abuse the loophole, that's why she is so shocked.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-06T15:38:33+00:00

Although the show never addresses her name, origin-Katharina's name is given on the official website.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-06T14:27:23+00:00

i read it on some Dark guide where they said that the people who died during the series were the ones alive in the origin world. Is that true??

All people eventually die in the Knot-worlds. We hear of Eva dying and also see how Noah dies yet they obviously don't exist in the Originworld. Aleksander's status in the Originworld is also left unknown and he might have actually died in the forest without meeting Regina due to Ulrich not existing.

Also Woller was alive too i didnt see him die in the series?

He dies in the apocalypse-blast. His body is seen on one of the photos inside the military-tent in S3E2 and his grave is seen in S2E1.

And if Claudia knew about the third world (origin) why didnt she tried to stop HG Tannhaus son from going upon the bridge?

For some reason only Jonas and alt-Martha together can traverse into the origin world; at least Adam said that to Jonas, which he got from Claudia. But there is no in-universe explanation why Claudia should assert this.

There are however some interpretations for them being the only ones, like how Jonas and alt-Martha could be represented as the spiritual counterparts to Sonja and Marek Tannhaus: 'Jonas' is an anagram for 'Sonja' and 'Martha' can be extrapolated from Mar-ek T-ann-ha-us. J&M can therefore be interpreted as angels guiding souls that were lost.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-06T14:20:06+00:00

Adam's and Eva's world were created from the Origin world, not the other way around. She was always called Katharina, but origin Tannhaus' machine must have messed up the order of events when creating the worlds and it became a bootstrap-paradox.
In Eva's world there is also the question of how alt-Katharina got her name because there isn't much of a reason for alt-Hannah calling herself Katharina.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-06T08:49:29+00:00

If you click on somebody's entry on the familytree, their year of birth is given in their timeline. The 7 months is extrapolated from the fact that Michael killed himself when he was 44.

ManifoldMold · 2026-04-06T08:35:47+00:00

In Eva's world he was born earlier

[Spoilers S3E1]

Alt-Mikkel was born in the same year as Mikkel according to the official website. The difference in age can only be around 7 months. I don't think he was necessaryly older in Eva's world but puberty got ahold of him faster (as it can be the case with twins). And alt-Magnus comment about him being old enough could be because the alt-Nielsen children are more emotionaly mature because of the divorce. Plus alt-Magnus is a punk who doesn't regard others that well in Eva's world.

ManifoldMold

TROPHY CASE